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LOST IN MY SPACE – SEVEN DAYS SPENT WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE YEAR

‘AREN’T you scared?” the first stranger who I meet off of MySpace asks me.

“That I’ll be murdered?” I finish.

“Yes,” he says, then takes a moment to survey my 6-foot-2-nonpixellated-live-in-personoutsidethe-tiny-user-screen frame. “Don’t worry,” he assures me. “You are too tall to murder. It would take many men.” Wow. Now that’s what I call the magic of MySpace.

Not only did I not get murdered that night, but for one week straight, I said “yes” to every person who messaged me, invited me to an event or tried to engage me in probing online discussion (“hey it’s tammi, look me up for sum hot camming action!” “Yes, Tammi, but your hopes and dreams, what about those?”).

Why did I do it? Because Time magazine just named me, my nonhomicidal date, and of course, shy, sweet Tammi to be its 2006 Person of the Year. That’s right – the people behind the astonishing rise of Internet sites like MySpace are finally getting their due. And how often does one get an opportunity to actually meet the Person of the Year?

Mom, this story’s for you.

DAY ONE

I’m a very goal-oriented person, so I want to meet someone right away. Angelo, whose picture shows him carefree on the beach, shirt off, says he can meet tonight. Progress.

I meet him in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, at a restaurant I have picked because it seems the kind of place he’d be least likely to chop me up into little pieces. He is attractive in a bloated Elvis kind of way, but he is also a good 10 years older than his pic. He says I am even sexier than mine. My current MySpace image is of me when I am 7 years old, naked and smiling in a swimming pool. Awesome.

I ask him what kind of girls he likes. He has had bad luck. “They are pretty, the American girls,” he says, “but no brains.” “They are superficial?” I ask. “What?” he says. “Shallow?” I ask. “What?” he says. “Paris Hilton,” I say. Yes, he nods his head. This is the universal language.

Try as I might, it’s hard to understand him. He’s MyItalian.

“Yooptie,” he says. “You are a yooptie?” “What?” I say. “Yoopay, yooptay.” “What?” I say.

“Yoopayyy,” he says. “Yuppie?” I ask. Yes, he nods. “You are yuppie?” I realize that, within two hours of meeting a stranger from MySpace, he has called my number quicker than men I have dated for weeks.

Maybe there’s something about each of us already having browsed one another’s pics, comments and “About Me” that has ratcheted up the cut-to-the-chase factor.

Honesty. It’s the Trait of the Year.

DAY TWO

I originally pitched this story as “The 12 Days of MySpace.” Get it? On Day Two, I e-mail my editor and say “there’s no f – – – ing way” I’ll last that long. I’m running out to a pay phone to set up a date with Buddy, a man dressed in military garb in his picture, who asks if I want to meet him at his place, alone, to get to know one another better. I cheer myself up by remembering Angelo’s comment that it would take many men. No thanks. Just a drink.

I’m roaming around the bar, going up to fit young black men and saying, “Are you Buddy?” I get approached by a cute finance guy.

“Meeting someone for a blind date?” he asks. I explain to him about MySpace, the date, last night. Finance Guy says that I should spend the evening with him instead and, as my date walks through the door (Finance Guy whispers, “Oh yeah this is him”), I coyly tell Buddy that I just need to finish talking to “my old friend.” Finance Guy says with a cold grin: “Enjoy your date.” But . . . check it out. A few days later, Finance Guy uses Google to track me down and ask me for a date via MySpace. My friends are divided as to whether this makes him a mad genius or a total tool. All I know is that thanks to MySpace, one can develop a much, much more complicated Game.

Back to Buddy. He is a harmless young man who looks nothing like the scary intimidating figure in the military garb from his pic. He’s from Haiti. Says he could totally be a MySpace pimp if he wanted to. Tells me that every girl he meets on MySpace has a kid.

Do I have a kid? No, I say. “But what if the two of us were to have kids?” I ask him. What does he think our kids’ MySpace profiles would be like?

He emphasizes again that, if he wanted to be, he could be a MySpace pimp.

What does that even mean? He explains: “Being a MySpace pimp means having all these girls who you can call up any time. They’ll pick you up in their car and then you do whatever. They’re in your friends list. That’s being a MySpace pimp.” Maybe there is such a thing as a little too much honesty.

DAY THREE

Messaging with all of these people is exhausting. One person gives me his phone number, but it’s in the form of a comment that if I were to approve would be visible to the entire world. That’s insane. How desperate are we, really? I’m suddenly glad to know the term MySpace pimp. Thanks, but no thanks.

I accept a new friend request from a man who begins frantically messaging me. I click on his profile to see more about him. His headline is “three way fantasy.” I am his only friend. Doesn’t even have Tom on there. This is hard-core MySpace.

I write him back. “Tell me your entire life story from the moment you were born up until the moment that you decided to have a three-way.” He complies, and I feel a little sorry for both of us.

“Tell me more about the high school years.” He complies. “I did a lot of drugs, I listened to a lot of metal.” I ask which drugs, which metal.

“Just about everything pot coke shrooms Aerosmith,” he says.

Our friendship faces its first real test. “Aerosmith is not metal,” I reply.

The next day his profile is deleted.

I feel genuine remorse, and in some weird way really do hope he meets The One.

Or The Three. Or whatever. It’s a lonely world.

DAY FOUR

You don’t know MySpace until you know George Jack. He is a 48year-old who is looking for “the perfect women who is smart as well as nice eye candy.” I am in his Top 8. He has 137 friends. Almost all of them are people with names like “Girlz Only,” “Candiberry” and “Howard Stern.” When I respond to George, he starts barraging me with messages.

What is my favorite drink? Can we change where we meet? No, and no. We meet in Union Square, and it’s kind of like “Sleepless in Seattle” except that he lives in his parents’ basement in The Bronx and I want to kill myself.

Let’s be fair. George is pretty cool. I like his spirit. He goes to Club Med all the time, his last girlfriend was a smoking hot 26year-old (just check the picture in his wallet) and it’s not weird at all.

He enjoys NASCAR. He works nights. MySpace is the only Web site he goes to. Yep.

I find out that George found me on a group called “MyHotties,” which, because I accept every friend request that I receive, I had no idea I was even on. He says he likes me because I’m not fake like some of the women on there. He tells me some ladies will try to get him to pay for their journey to America. I’m not like that at all, and I feel really great about myself.

We part ways, and he tells me when he will be online next. The schedule depends on when the computer store is open.

George isn’t ashamed, and I kind of respect him for it. MySpace lets you be your 48-year-old, basement-dwelling bad self and sorry if you can’t deal with it – because you know what? Girlz Only and Candiberry can.

DAY FIVE

I hear about “Promiscuous Saturdays” at BLVD nightclub from a user named BrooklynGoose. Mention Frontrunna Entertainment, and hook yourself up with the guest list. Two-for-one apple martinis. It’s the dream of MySpace realized. The joint is crawling with the ladies. Iwonder what George is doing right now.

A few K-Fed lookalikes grab my hand and start dancing. I ask everyone I meet if they are on MySpace. It’s like asking if people enjoy air. I meet several musicians trying to make it big on the site.

They have thousands and thousands of friends, and I’ve never felt lonelier.

DAY SIX

There’s going out on MySpace and then there’s going to a birthday party that someone puts up on the site inviting everyone to join them at said birthday party.

That would be Jay Solano, who is celebrating his 24th birthday in style at Club Deep. I have to go.

Why would someone invite all the millions of people on MySpace to come to his birthday party?

“Because everybody is my friend on MySpace,” says Solano charitably. “If you have nothing else to talk about, we can always talk about how we are addicted to MySpace. It’s my gateway to the world.” He introduces me to his girlfriend, whom he also met on MySpace. They are sweet, and for the first time all week, I think that I really do want to be this guy’s friend.

DAY SEVEN

I’m going to be honest: When I started this, I thought it would be a silly, entertaining fluke, but I can’t shake the memories of Three Way Fantasy Guy and You’re Too Tall To Be Murdered Guy and, duh, George. They want to find someone. They want to have the entire world show up at their birthday party and have it be The Best Birthday Party of All Time. You have to respect that.

My final meeting is a halfhearted cup of tea in Midtown. I arrange it last-minute with a normal engineer guy at an Au Bon Pain. He seems a little disgusted by my whole pursuit, which makes me like him even more. I pump him for information. After a whole lot of nothing, he finally says, “Listen, I go to MySpace because it’s the one site my work doesn’t block out.” That’s when it hits me like a stroke of total clarity. I get it. What he’s really saying is this: “I go to MySpace because it’s my one connection to the world.” It’s like George, who says MySpace is the only site he visits. We’re all sitting at our crappy cubicles feeling alienated, feeling disenfranchised, but wait, who’s online now?

Because even when you’re having a terrible day or even when you didn’t meet the perfect Promiscuous Lover or even when things aren’t going as well in your parents’ basement as you planned, you know what? There are still more hotties out there to be found and put in your Top 8. And like Birthday Boy says, that is a gateway.

I wonder what George is doing right now.